www.adult-dyslexia-centre.co.uk Excellent website for a centre in MaidenheadThe Maidenhead Dyslexia Centre was set up some years ago by a colleague of mine from East Berkshire College. Since then she has worked tirelessly for the adult dyslexic population in the area.The Centre arranges assessments and tuition. Take a look at their website. Even if you do not live in the area there is much information and interest on its pages.http://www.adult-dyslexia-centre.co.uk/

The competitions booklet is now available for the Winchester Writers' Conference which is held in June each year. There are 18 competitions and you can enter even if you do not go to the Conference. Entry fees are £7 per competition entry for those attending and £9 for those who are unable to participate. There is a children's poetry competition with three age bands and the theme centres on the environment and nature. The deadline for the First Three Pages, Short Story and Shorter Short Story is 25 May 2012 and the deadline for all other competitions is Friday 1st June 2012.If you can find the Conference fee for the Saturday, it will pay dividends as this entitles you to attend a plethora of helpful seminars and have three 1-1 interviews with writers, agents or publishers, only two of which can be with an agent or publisher.

On the website you will also find a link to the Novel Writing Weekend in March. I attended this event in 2011 and found it both stimulating and valuable. If you have not been on one of these weekends organised by the Winchester Writers Conference, I can heartily recommend it.

I have just 'liked' this Facebook page of World Literary Cafe but the above is the website which is of great interest to authors, readers, in fact anyone interested in the literary world.Other links of interest would be www.writing.com

http://www.mslexia.co.ukMslexia is the magazine for women who write. It is full of good articles, advice, new writing, features, calendars of writers' events and lists of competitions.At the moment my grandchildren and I are writing poems for the competition Welcome to Britain. The deadline is 6 April. To find out more go to www.derby.ac.uk/buxtonpoetrycompetition

Meeting an illustrator this afternoon - I can't even draw a straight line so I am in dire need, if my Grandma's Poetry Book is going to get published.

Anyway it made me clear out a very old Poetry folder and sort out the dross from the nearly dross. I have enough general poems for another book - they tend to be verging on the political and give a taste of what was in the news at the time.
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And we went dack on the dus.And we went to the shop.We went to peziz hut.0And i had pasta.If a child of seven years old or less is confusing 'b' and 'd', the errors should slowly sort themselves out. If a child is left handed they will have difficulty distinguishing between b/d but they are not necessarily dyslexic.Lefthandness can cause a variety of problems, one being messy writing as the left hand drags across the paper and smudges the ink. There are strategies that can be taught so that a left-hander can cope with this 'difference'.

If a child of eight years or more still confuses these two letters, it would be advisable to get him* screened for Dyslexia. A child with Dyslexia learns differently from non-dyslexic children and needs to be taught in a different way. Useful strategies are to personalise material to be learned such as spelling, liberal yet meaningful use of colour, multi-sensory activities such as writing in sand, use of paint, saying words slowly as they are written, writing in the air, finding other words with similar patterns to build a spelling vocabulary and using 3D plastic or wooden letters.

Magnetic letters work well on a fridge - muddle the spelling on the fridge two or three times a day and get the child to re-order the word in correct letter sequence. Dyslexic children have to work four times as hard as non-dyslexic children as they do not have the same neural connections. Multi-sensory learning ensures that any available route can be targeted.

More on spelling on a later post.

There are many websites which sell items useful to those who are left handed.

I have a namesake in New Zealand who is, like me, concerned that children and teenagers are not learning the most useful ICT skills which can fit them for work and life in general.

Di Brooks can be found on 'Di's blog' - I googled this to see if I could use that blogname but, as you will see, it was already in use. Her articles are of interest to teachers and parents alike.

Her latest post is about Jigzone.Di Brooks wrote: 'Using Jigzone you can upload a graphic to the site and it will automatically make a jigsaw from it. This would be great for a teacher to use and embed the graphic into a wiki or a blog to create interest. Students could use it to embed as part of a presentation.You can nominate the number of pieces in your puzzle and the shape of the pieces in the puzzle.'

This would be great for a teacher to use and embed the graphic into a wiki or a
blog to create interest. Students could use it to embed as part of a
presentation. You can nominate the number of pieces in your puzzle and the shape
of the pieces in the puzzle

I am going to experiment with resources for reading and writing on the site.

Another of Di's posts concerns research being undertaken at Plymouth University UK on social media, something that teachers can use to enhance their College and University provision. A tutor group can have a Facebook page and post questions about a current piece of coursework. Tutors may post answers to problems posed. I have used this with Higher Education students who have run into problems with their essays. Often another student has posted a similar problem and received feedback or it is possible to search for the feedback from the tutor.

Saturday, 18 February 2012

I was sent the following abstract on some research into the effects of fathers reading to boys. You can see more information on the Read Dorset site - the link for this is above.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether boys read to by their
fathers for the six-month period immediately preceding entrance into first
grade would score significantly higher on predictor instruments for first-grade
reading achievement when compared with boys read to by their mothers or boys in
an unplanned situation for the same period.

All boys in a central New York
State school's kindergarten sections were assigned to a father-read-to, a
mother-read-to, a father-not-participating, or a control (unplanned reading)
group for a six-month treatment period. The experimental groups were read to by
the assigned parent reader about two or three times a week. The dependent
variables were letter naming and word recognition (isolated words and words in
context).

The predictor criterion measures were administered individually at
the conclusion of treatment, which coincided with the beginning of the boys'
first-grade school year. Within the context of the study's limitations, the
results indicated that father-read-to boys had significantly higher mean scores
on the words in context or criterion measure than the mother-read-to, the
father-not-participating, or the control group of boys. (Author/LL)

The following link has a self test on the web page. It is part of the BDA site but is not the sort of test that a child would do.

Adults with dyslexia will have had difficulties at school and this can hold them back in terms of applying for promotion and career decisions may be made with their difficulties in mind. There is more help for people in the workplace and I will cover this in the future.

Something happened to Callum in the autumn term 2011. A normally cheerful child he has, however, always been the child who falls over, loses, forgets or breaks things and struggles with schoolwork. In November the phrase 'I'm rubbish' crept into his vocabulary and homework became stressful and resulted in tears.

Callum's Mum had spoken to me two years ago about her concerns with his progress at her son's school. Not yet at his seventh birthday, I suggested she help him as much as possible but persuaded her not to go down the assessment route which results in a label. As I told her, there are few specialist teachers or education psychologists who will assess a child before they are seven. Callum is now 8 years 10 months and we are thinking that this has gone on long enough.

Callum's difficulties have begun to cause him problems socially and emotionally. He loves his Saturday drama group and is the only one of three siblings to attend, the intention to find him something that is special to him that he enjoys. This is important - to find an interest, passion or skill that is not shared with siblings who are succeeding at school.. Initial assessments concentrate on strengths so parents can help by identifying these and encourage them at home. But now, Callum has refused to audition for parts, despite getting into the final ten at an audition in September. This has been followed by refusing to audition for a school production.'I won't get it. I'm rubbish,' was all he would say when asked. If your child is already saying this there will be more work to be done.

Last week his mother was ferrying several classmates to an event, when one of the children chimed up that 'Callum's the messiest writer in the class'. She felt herself cringe on her son's behalf. Mum is also aware that Callum's work is never put up on the wall and very little work comes home from school. With Parents' Evening looming after half term, his mother asked for a preliminary 'chat' with his teacher prior to Parents' Evening. This was initially refused with the evening imminent. 'But, she said, 'I just want to have a quick word about Callum. More hesitations .... but she persisted, adding,'so that you can have a think and talk to other people before that evening.' Eventually, it was agreed and the result is that Callum has been moved speedily into a 'special spelling group'. Why this had not been done before is unclear.

Mum was clearly distressed the week before half term as she feels helpless to support him. She is not a trained teacher and is not in a position therefore to train as a specialist dyslexia tutor. One route for her may be to take up a place on a Teaching Assistants' Course. When I studied for my Diploma in Specific Learning Difficulties, I was the only person on the course who didn't have dyslexic children. Most teachers were there to learn how to help their own children. In reality this does not always work as even if you have the qualification you will find there are barriers to teaching your own child. I have often had a child brought to me by a mother who is a trained specialist. 'He won't do it for me,' is the common complaint.

I agreed to do some subtle basic assessments on Callum. He already has Test and Exam phobia, failing anything that is presented as such, whereas his classwork is acceptable. Poor exam and test grades which do not reflect oral ability is a key factor with dyslexia. Callum's low self-esteem is such that I knew he would not want to come into a room with me and 'do tests'. I therefore sat with him in their lounge while the other children were occupied with other things. We had an easy chat about school and what he does not like (everything apparently). I asked him if he could say long words and the answer was 'no'. Will you try some for me I asked. He tried four words - preliminary, philosophical, statistical and millennium - all without success but we had a laugh about it and I said I couldn't say 'preliminary' either.We discussed learning times tables but he has learnt the 7x table by reciting 7, 14, 21, 28, 35 and so on, so if you ask him what are four sevens he cannot tell you. I then asked him if he could tell me the months of the year. He made errors and backtracked from May to start again, finishing eventually by reversing October and November. When I asked him to say them backwards he said 'no way'. I know that his grandfather has always demonstrated signs of Dyslexia and Callum told me he confused 'b' and 'd' giving me examples. 'I write deing instead of being,' he said.

I, therefore, know that Callum has 5 indicators on the Bangor and know him well enough to predict this will increase to a possible 8 my next visit. Interestingly, his siblings were writing poems for a competition run by Buxton Press in association with Derby University. Callum had disappeared when they began composing, one on a laptop and one on a lined file pad. This reluctance to write is a key indicator of Dyslexia. If a child avoids writing or produces very little written work, he or she should be investigated for Specific Learning Difficulties (Dyslexia). Any parents reading this would be advised to approach their child's school if this is the case with their child. The simple things I demonstrated above could also be tried with the child either as a game or in conversation, but privately! Take care not to let siblings laugh at the child who cannot pronounce big words. Likewise they should not laugh at his writing, awkward stumbling reading and poor basic calculations in maths. I suspect that, for Callum, this has started to happen in school and caused him to label himself 'rubbish' at everything.

I asked Callum if he would read me some words on a card which he did happily. On this test his score was average. Then I took a deep breath and asked if he would write some words for me as I wanted to see how many words he knew. Percentiles express the child's achievement as compared to a similar age group.

If this story strikes a familiar chord with you, you have the right to ask to see the SENCO at your child's school. SENCO stands for Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator. More tests can then be carried out.

I hope to be able to start giving Callum specialist tuition. He already has a tutor who is not a specialist, but he likes her and she is doing very useful things with him. However, he needs someone to deal with his poor phonological awareness and specialist tutors are trained to do this. He also needs strategies for dealing with his difficulties.

And what can Mum do? Well Callum was able to spell words such as - him, make, cook, must, enter and light so I have shown Mum how to build large groups of words using these basic patterns. As he can spell the syllable chunk 'ter' he should be able to add 'er' to 'light' for example. This will have an esteem building effect on Callum. His spelling mistakes demonstrate good knowledge of sounds but poor ability to 'hear the sounds in words' Examples are crecd for correct, recke for reach, metereal for material, sprise for surprise, sercall for circle. They are what the specialists call 'phonological alternatives'.A very good attempt was made at 'explain' ie 'explan'. This is therefore good news despite the low average score for spelling.

Callum's error with 'reach' suggests he needs some work with 'ch' as he has confused it with 'ck'.

I will keep you posted with Callum's progress as we meet.So watch this space.

Thursday, 16 February 2012

While many universities have their own guidelines for marking the work of dyslexic students, I have been sent on a dyslexia forum the link below which is very comprehensive and goes some way to explain the difficulties faced by students with dyslexia.

Young people with dyslexia should not be put off the idea of going to university as there is a considerable amount of help for them via the Disabled Students' Allowance. Once the student is diagnosed and his or her needs assessed, they will, if they qualify, be awarded specialist tuition and a wide range of assistive software which will help them to complete essays, dissertations and other projects and complete their course.

The marking guidelines below are typical of those present in other universities.

Sunday, 12 February 2012

How are you faring in this bitterly cold spell? For pensioners in particular, the coldest winter days can be wrought with worries about what the heating costs will be. Although we rarely see snow here in Swanage and, indeed, in our road (near the sea) we do not get iced up cars and frostly pavements. However, I have been told that our allotment has a sheet of ice on it where the wet soil has frozen. More about allotments another day.

For now, keeping warm when one is retired, despite the heating allowance, is a topic of interest to us. We do need our allowance but I have been pleased to see the more affluent pensioners give their heating allowance to charity. Perhaps one day I will have that luxury. When I worked a few days a week, I felt I could afford having the heating turned up on my days at home. However, I am now not even working the one day that I was before Christmas. So what do we do with energy prices going up all the time? There are some simple ways to economise and, for us, we have seen our energy bills reduce drastically this month after a very favourable meter reading. In fact, we have had a sizeable refund, very useful after Christmas, I am sure you will agree.

THE ONE HOUR RULESounds formidable but is boils down to NOT having your heating on a timer. We have, over the last few years, invested in warm pyjamas (this does not have the turn-off that it did in our younger days when we wouldn't have been seen dead in them, even in hospital!). We also have thick warm full-length dressing gowns which we put on as we get up in the morning - forget the heating coming on before you are awake - that is such a waste. When my heating was installed some 7 years ago, I persuaded the firm to give me a manual thermostat rather than rely on the programmer on the boiler which I didn't understand and which I was sure didn't work as it should. There was a small bill for his time -it was a fiddly job I admit. Once I am up in my dressing gown, I turn the thermostat up from 16 degrees. These mornings, it has been switching on at that temperature for a very short while around 5-6 am. The radiators are slightly warm to the touch at 7 or 8am. But in moderately cold weather, the boiler doesn't fire at all until I turn it up manually. This means that if we sleep in - a happening more frequent as we get older or have been watching This Week until 12.30am on a Friday morning - we are not wasting fuel while we sleep. We have adopted blankets in the last few years which we have under and over our duvet and in the coldest weather we throw on one more. The morning heating runs for one hour while we have breakfast and use the bathroom. I dress as far as leggings and thermal sleeved top and go to my lounge to do about twenty minutes of yoga. The stretching is a good way to increase circulation. I then put on my next layer of clothing. The heating is now off, turned down to 17, even 16 if you can bear it and it will stay off until later in the day as the sun settles on my large front windows. I now have a long sleeved top over my thermal and jeans over my leggings. I have one pair of socks and - this year's investment - fleecy lined slippers; shoes are too cold and wear out carpets. I spend some time writing and after about an hour I feel the need for another top which is a thicker roll neck jumper. With any luck I may have done some housework - a boring but good way to keep warm. One friend told me she is not averse to getting a hot water bottle for when she is watching television.

GET OUT AND WALKWhen I feel the cold I put on a fleece and my thick coat and go to the shops. When I return, I am amazed at the warmth of my flat and all my layers are shedded in a heap to be replaced slowly. However, now is the time for a snack lunch and we choose hot soup or beans or spaghetti on toast, after which we feel warm enough to sit and watch some lunch time news. Slowly we replace the layers but then mid afternoon we go out for a walk. Living at the seaside, we have the joy of walking along the sea front or up on the cliffs. I walk fast so avoid walking with my partner, who has short legs and wants a gentle stroll. This 30-40 minutes ,followed by a little more shopping and the social effects of chatting to people we know on the street, gets us through to teatime. Often there is the benefit of cooking by the grill or oven and, once again, when we have fed, we are warmed up. The slogan 'Heat or Eat' irritates me as even a small portion of hot food helps heat the body.

JOIN OUTSIDE GROUPS AND ACTIVITIESSo we have been out twice but here is another tip for staying warm. I am involved with several activities which take me out each day. There is a Tuesday Zumba class. Walking to and from this class not only boosts my circulation but takes up nearly three hours in the middle of the day. On three Monday mornings, I go to a Writers' Group which also gives me a walk before and after and two hours in pleasant company. Of course, if they visit me I have my heating on. I would hate anyone to say they were cold at Di's home. This year, I have started a half-day volunteering in a local charity shop, which keeps me away from my hall thermostat and, on top of this, I am out two evenings doing Country Dancing and Musical Theatre when my thermostat can also be turned right down. When I tell people what I do, they say I leave them breathless with my energy, but while I am active, I believe in keeping on the move. For several years, I sang one evening a week in a choir but this meant sitting all evening which is why my friend and I gave it up for the Dancing. Also at Swanage Musical Theatre rehearsals we are on our feet all evening. Another change in my life is that previously my main area of work for sixteen years was 1-1 teaching of dyslexic students, again a sedentary activity. This I have now given up so that I can be more active physically. So, I can hear you saying, but you sit and write, which indeed I do, but only for 1-2 hour bursts during which I stop several times to do those awful things called chores, standing scraping vegetables, making beds and hoovering. I would get more writing done if I paid someone to do my cleaning but I think I would get very very fat!

Whenever I am sitting watching television I put on a long warm cardigan over all the other layers and I use a blanket round my legs. I am not afraid to look like the Granny in the Ladybird books, as I probably do anyway with my glasses perched on my nose.

We have also started keeping a fleecy hat on indoors especially for my other half who has lost most of his hair. They do say that we lose most of our heat from our heads.

Our one luxury is an electric blanket which we put on for 20 minutes before going to bed. I do believe that at our age it is important to go to bed warm.

And then there is always my most favourite place, mentioned on my first blog last week. Libraries are warm and there are newspapers and magazines to read as well as the books on the shelves. When I am no longer active enough for Zumba or Country Dancing you will know where to find me on a cold morning!

Saturday, 11 February 2012

After my last post about the benefits of children learning to touch type in readiness for Further and Higher Education and even in the world of work, I circulated it to some ex-colleagues in the College where I worked for five years in the Learning Support Department.

One ex-colleague friend now works at another college. She replied and asked permission to use my ICT in Education article in a Staff Training/Development session. Of course I was delighted, my only request, that she put my blogspot link on the PowerPoint or handout. I say this in case other readers would like to use my material.

Now for more tips for students with dyslexia, with regard to WORD. I mentioned the use of Shift F7 for a thesaurus. It is important to have the cursor on the word you are researching and the word has to be the root word. For example if you want a better word than 'got', you need to type 'get' and then search with Shift F7, if you want a better word than 'requests' which is plural, you need to delete the 's' at the end of the word before searching. There will be many choices when the thesaurus opens, so it is good to teach about nouns and verbs while doing this, something many students, even the non-dyslexic ones, have never really mastered.

It is important to insert page numbering on any essay. This may seem unnecessary when you start an essay and only have achieved two pages (around 500 words) of a 3000 word essay. However, I have lost count of the times a student has presented me with a sheaf of papers from her bag which spill on to the floor and which take the first fifteen minutes of the session to sort into order. I am a great believer in the use of Footers and Headers during the essay process. A useful addition to the Footer is the date. This is something I do with my writing. This ensures that when you take a look at some sheets of paper, say a chapter you have been working on, you know immediately if this is the most up-to-date version. I have had students renaming their essay as a number ie 1,2,3, and so on which is not conducive to finding the most up to date version. Number 1 will remain at the top of the Documents list long after you have reached version 30! A name in the footer will ensure that any stray pages are identified as yours and the title of the essay will also avoid any mix ups in hard copy files.

Before starting an essay, set up the footer and header information and page numbering. Then save the document with the name of the essay. Students will get in a muddle if they name documents, letter or essay. Give it the title that is on the assignment brief eg Essay Ethics Year 2. This document name will allow the student to scroll easily to all the documents prefaced 'essay' and then to the current one in progress. I have seen memory sticks with very intelligent organisation with different folders for the years of study, a folder for general uni information and a folder for personal documents. Students will have individual needs suited to the course they are studying.

WORD also has a search function - Ctrl F. This is useful when the document has become lengthy and complex. I always advise using headings for paragraphs which are linked to the essay brief and which ensure they keep writing to the point of the paragraph and don't go off at a tangent in the middle of a totally unrelated paragraph. Many tutors will not want headings in the final product but that is no reason not to use them when the essay is under construction. This use of the search function will ensure that the student can quickly find the necessary point in the essay where they wish to insert, for example, a quote or a definition or some extra information. This search function is useful if a student has mis-spelt the name of a scholar who is being quoted. It may be that she/he has spelt it correctly some times and not others. Using the search function for the incorrect spelling and replacing it with the correct one using Find Next will allow the correct spellings to be skipped and the incorrect ones to be replaced.

My ex-colleague who responded to my blog link has a dyslexic son and has asked questions about assistive software which i will address in a later post.

More about using WORD to enhance student writing in future posts.

Please comment or ask questions which I will try to address. in later posts

Friday, 10 February 2012

This is only my third blog and I am learning all the time. On my second blog I managed to change the settings and set up some labels, sometimes known as tags on internet material so that keywords are picked up in the search engines.

I am prompted to write on the subject of ICT and its important place in education as, when performing a simple search for my own blog, I landed on Diane Brooks' blog (Di's Blog) www.dianebrooks.blogspot.com . Diane has taught in primary schools and now teaches ICT in a New Zealand university. At the moment I don't seem to be able to comment on her article but when I have learnt a little more about blogspot.com I shall indeed be agreeing with her views on how the teaching of technology in schools is not really serving our children's needs in later schooling, GCSE essays, A Level projects and in Higher Education. More about this later but here is how it all started for me.

Preferring a future with my boyfriend to the pursuit of A Levels and Teacher Training College, I persuaded my mother to let me leave school after only five weeks in the sixth form but, on her insistence, I was enrolled quickly on a Secretarial Course at St Albans College of Further Education. Amazingly, this is now part of a nearby university and I sometimes wonder what happened to the excellent courses there. We studied Monday to Friday, 9-5 with one evening finishing after 9pm. There was much to learn, such as shorthand, typewriting, Law, Accounts, Commerce, Secretarial Duties and Office Practice and those who had no O Level English were steered firmly in the right direction. We all left at 17+ literate and numerate and yet we were considered the 'drop outs' - those who were not staying on for A Levels and University. Imagine that these days. My fondest memory has to be Friday afternoons and typing to music - drills which have stood me in good stead. Sadly, drilling and rote learning has been considered inappropriate over recent years but I can testify to its results. After one year I was typing at 60 words per minute and writing shorthand at 130 wpm. My wonderful FE teacher Enid Lyall told me that I didn't need to forget a career in teaching as, if I did well in the secretarial exams, I could go on to teach those subjects. I never forgot her words and, as soon as I had achieved my desire for three babies, I enrolled at Mid Herts College in Welwyn Garden City (now part of another university no doubt) on a Teachers' Certificate in Typewriting Course. Within a few years I had teaching experience and another Teachers' Certificate, this time in Office Practice.

I have my mother to thank for the skills I learnt at St Albans and my subsequent teaching career. Once my youngest daughter was at school, I taught Secretarial and Business Administration subjects in a college of Further Education, now Uxbridge College www.uxbridge.ac.uk for 19 years. All students on our courses undertook an intensive Sight and Sound keyboarding program on a daily basis for two weeks. The keyboarding was then reinforced and developed through daily Typewriting classes, drills from the board and textbook exercises until all demonstrated automaticity in touch typing. Few students had learnt this skill before, although they would often insist they had 'done' typing at school despite hammering the keyboard with clenched fists and two finger attack. Once we had reformed the bad habits, we saw our role as extending the breadth of the student's knowledge of English - use of a dictionary was mandatory in my classes, something recalled by an ex-student of mine when we met years later. Nowhere was this more essential than in audio-typewriting classes where homophone misuse such as hear/here was common. Of course, eventually, students learnt word processing and the courses began to include spreadsheets and databases. No doubt they now include social media and hopefully learn the pitfalls as well as the plusses of this use of technology.

For the past eighteen years I have been teaching dyslexic students in Further and Higher Education and also some private pupils from primary and secondary schools both in Middlesex and then here in Dorset after I moved eleven years ago. I have stressed to both students and parents the need for good keyboarding/touch typing skills. I am firmly convinced that this is a basic skill which should be taught as pedantically as Literacy and Numeracy. Playing with the mouse and getting pretty pictures on the screen is just not enough for any pupil. However, students with dyslexia have difficulty learning, reading, writing and remembering, so, if the skill is acquired early on, it can help with writing essays, coursework, projects and research. It is one less thing to worry about and no student will ever say they regretted the time it took to acquire the skill.

Essential for the student with dyslexia (try googling 'dyslexia,uk' for more information) is a laptop for their use and their use only. It is possible to get free assistive technology such as mindmapping programs and voice recognition programs which adapt to the student's own voice - hence the reason they should have their own computer. There will be more on assistive software in a later post.

For now, there are also free fun touch typing programs such as dance mat http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/. This program will record the pupil's progress so that they can work for a set time each day or, say 4-5 times a week. Each time they log on, the program remembers the stage they were at. The animations are great for primary schoolchildren. Even teenagers will love it. There is also a good touch typing program available on the internet for free download at www.sense-lang.co.uk. My own favourite and much loved by my grandchildren was one called Type Faster, available at http://www.portablefreeware.com/?id=650 . This program does not have the animation that Dance Mat has, but I tested this on a seven year old and a four year old and both demonstrated good concentration and the motivation to 'type like Nanny'. If this post is ringing bells for you, you need to learn the skill first yourself and be a role model for your dyslexic or non-dyslexic child/teenager.

Accurate touch typing skills are not only needed by dyslexic children and teenagers, they should be learnt by ALL children well before they need the skill for written work. Only then can they concentrate on the quality of their writing. If spelling is an issue, they can be encouraged to right click on the 'wiggly red line' to find the correct word. If the difficulties are serious they should be encouraged to use a voice recognition program for homework and then learn some basic editing skills. More of this later too.

Meanwhile, parents, find out if your children are learning to touch type and use a keyboard efficiently. Do they know that in WORD, Shift F7 is the thesaurus and they can experiment with 'better' words to explain what they want to say? In Higher Education my experience was such that I never met a student who knew how to use the thesaurus in Word. I demonstrated it once and they never forgot it so I had to wonder what they had done at school.

If you are a teacher reading this, what is happening in your school? I would love to hear from you.

Thursday, 9 February 2012

Once a month I get a dream of a gift from my neighbour. Full of good reads, rants, book reviews and wonderful cartoons, The Oldie arrives like clockwork. I only have to see the pristine, unread, securely sellophaned new copy sitting in the pile of post in our joint entrance hall and I know that, within the next 24 hours, the previous month's copy will be placed at the foot of the stairs waiting for me. So here I am sitting with the February 2012 edition early enough in the month to enter, by e mail the competition of the month. A poem called 'New Shoes' with a maximum of 16 lines, deadline tomorrow 10th February. So I had better get my skates on, or rather, my new shoes.

There are opportunities for writers on the Oldie and my neighbour initially passed on the magazine after seeing an article of mine which had won first prize at the Winchester Writers Conferencehttp://www.writersconference.co.uk/conference.htm. Needless to say a reduced word count to match the magazine's requirements was acknowledged with 'not quite for us' - a very kind way of rejecting your article. I have tried since without success but they do have a page 'Out and About' and you can send your travel tips or stories to them and, if selected for publication, they will pay £50. This month's Oldie includes reference to tipping on cruises which is notoriously high, with service charges either added to your bill or an envelope provided with a suggested number of £££ per day. Reader Helen Graham states that cruisers are entitled to state they do not want tipping charges on their final bill and, furthermore, they do not have to give a reason. With a maximum of 300 words you can e mail a travel tip to editorial@theoldie.co.uk. I am racking my brains for an idea to contribute. I am sure I can come up with something eventually.

This month Webster's Webwatch concerns his conversion to a Kindle and Richard Ingrams, the editor, rants about the constant barrage of loudspeaker announcements on train stations and on the trains themselves, quite rightly asking how we coped in years gone by. I remember travelling by train with my mother and my sister and we never found ourselves on the wrong train or arriving too late. We expected delays - trains were never on time in the fifties. My mother was an old hand at travelling by train having taken many trips during the war when all the station names were blacked out. Luckily, she knew all the landmarks and could count, two skills that today's commuters might find challenging. After all they are all too busy listening to their ipods and reading e mails on their iphones.

Oldie contributors need to write with a certain humour which is only apparent if writers read several copies of the magazine. Try the Oldie website www.theoldie.co.uk to read the submission guidelines.

Tuesday, 7 February 2012

As a writer, I am constantly urged to read contemporary fiction if I hope to be published. I am always on the alert for new authors I may not have discovered yet or for recommendations from friends or in the media. I have on my bookshelf at home numerous books that I have acquired over the years from car boot sales, charity shops and via Amazon. Friends and family know that a book will be well received as a present but there are so many that I want to read that I fear my life span may not allow me time for all the wonderful books that are out there waiting to be read.

Until recently, I belonged to a local reading group which was started over ten years ago. However, after some thought I decided in the autumn that I wanted to choose my own reading for a while at least. So far I have clocked up many more books than the one a month I sometimes struggled with and reading is once again great fun.

We are fortunate in Swanage that our library didn't close when many others in Dorset and wider afield were being cut. Far from being closed, our library was given a face lift, work that took around nine months, during which time we had to queue up at the mobile library on the sea front. The online book reservations system really came into its own during this time. I only have to enter a title on the Dorset Libraries website and I will be able to reserve it online, then I receive an e mail when the item is awaiting collection. In the past I have rashly ordered books online only to see them sit on my shelf, not quite hitting the right spot to make me pick them up to read. Now I borrow the books first and if I find it a great read, I will either find it in a bookshop or online and buy my own copy.

However, last week I took two books back to the library and went round the shelves for a 'muse'. A book caught my eye that had been placed with the full cover exposed at the front of one of the bookshelves. It was Ellis Island by Kate Kerrigan. I looked inside the front cover and saw it was published in 2009. There were several date stamps for 2010 and 2011 but more recently with our updated system the books are scanned electronically so no dates are now visible - this has always been a guide as to a book's popularity. I am sure there is a way to search the system for that information but I have better things to do. With this technology, it is possible to print a receipt but I rarely do this as I know I will receive a reminder e mail when the book is due back.

What a good read Ellis Island was and I haven't stopped recommending it. The book is in three parts, the first set in rural Ireland where two childhood sweethearts are growing up. John has homely loving adoptive parents who have taken him in after the death of his own parents. Ellie lives a dull, drab and over disciplined life with a father who was 'nearly a priest'. Meals are basic and uninteresting, her mother cold and unloving. Ellie is welcomed in John's adoptive home where she enjoys stews, apple tarts, hot milky tea and the love she lacks at home. The sweethearts eventually run away to be married but within a short time John is involved with the War of Independence. When he is wounded, Ellie has the chance to go to America, working and sending home the money for an operation which will enable him to walk again. Ellie's life in America, although initially hard, has much to offer, compared to her life of poverty in Ireland and she stays on longer than the proposed year, although her heart remains with John. This is a captivating book and one of the best I have read this year. Part two, set in America, shows Ellie's determination to succeed. When her father is dying she returns to Ireland finding it primitive - her hand automatically brushing the wall for an absent electric light switch. She is desperate to get back to America but somehow she is able to bring something of her life in America to Ireland.

Next on my shelf is The Help, a present from my American penfriend. It has good reviews so I am looking forward to it. However, I am off to the library tomorrow to find some other delights.

I am not sure how helpful reading such wonderful books is when you are trying to write a book yourself as your own efforts fade in comparison but we will persevere!